Tag: retirement
Middle-Class Investing 111: Middle-Class Investing COMPLETE
The Middle-Class Investing 101 Series was super fun to write and develop. Investing gets a bad reputation among the middle class. People believe investing is about taking all kinds of crazy risks and flying by the seat of your pants. In reality, it is the exact opposite of this scenario. Investing is about creating a…
The Great Family Reset: The Independent Person Experiment Failed
It was an experiment for the ages. The idea was to send a person out of the home at age 18 and see if they could make it in the world. They used words like “be independent,” “go build,” and “become a man” to entice us into the world alone and without resources. A few…
Increase Your Savings Rate: It Determines When You Can Retire
How fast do you want to retire? Do you genuinely want to work until the full retirement age of 66? I know I don’t want to work for another 25 years. But what is the best way to retire early? We all hear terms like Financial Independence Retire Early (or F.I.R.E.), but what does that…
Middle-Class Investing 109: Create a Paycheck with Income Investing
We have finally made it to my favorite type of passive income—income investing. Although we took the long way, it is necessary to understand how we got here. Income investing is not for the faint of heart. That’s why starting with interest from high-yield savings accounts is good, and slowly work your way forward. Welcome…
Home Buying for the Average Person 2
“You will own nothing and be happy.” This thought process comes from the higher beings inside our governments, businesses, and military. Why is this quote so important to the middle-class family? Because we must be wary of how things slowly play out to fulfill this new reality. We used to buy physical products such as…
Two People, One Budget: Create a Budget and Start Income Investing
They say finances cause most marriages to fail, but what specifically is the disconnect between couples? More importantly, how can we prevent these issues from causing a division between the lovebirds? My wife, Kristina, and I have been married for 17 years, and we are on the same page financially. When we didn’t have “the…
Social Security vs. Income Investing
We should not depend on the government. That’s not to say that the government is terrible or plans to ruin our lives. However, the government is not our best source of reliable income; we are. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to create our own happy cash flow retirement system. I wrote an article titled…
Middle-Class Investing 103: Create Additional Streams of Income
To sit comfortably in the middle class, you must create additional income streams. Holding one or two jobs in the household is risky. Rich people understand the power of having multiple streams of income. It is how they continue to accumulate wealth, even during a recession. Welcome back to the Middle-Class Investing 101 series (101,…
Bonds for Mom: A Low-Risk Retirement Plan for Mom
As our mothers increase in age, chances are they will receive some kind of windfall. This can be from an inheritance, a life insurance policy, downsizing a home, or cashing in a 401K. As the son or daughter, you will want to ensure this money lasts until the end. Most people will turn over the…
What is Your Net Worth? How Long Can You Survive Without a Job?
Net worth has become a status symbol; apparently, if you are a net-worth millionaire, that is supposed to mean something. However, having a high net worth doesn’t necessarily mean you are wealthy. There is a massive difference between static and functional wealth. Today, let’s determine your net worth (and mine’s) and see how this money…
The Perfect Life: RV Life & Royalties
What a fantastic time in which we live. Never has it been easier or more convenient to make money from anywhere in the world. However, easier doesn’t mean less challenging. Living the laptop life comes with extreme discipline and consistency. We can merge the ideas of freedom and remote work with RV life. This means…
Preferred Shares vs. Common Stocks
There are tons of securities you can buy on a given day. So knowing what you are buying and why you are buying it is vital to long-term success. Most investors will purchase common stocks inside their various portfolios. However, many other options exist, including treasury bonds, Series “I” Bonds, closed-end funds, and mortgage REITs.…
Are You a Dividend Growth Investor or an Income Investor?
How do you like to see your money? This is at the heart of the question, “Are you a Dividend Growth Investor or an Income Investor?” If you like to see your investments always (most of the time) in the green, then you’ll probably lean towards Dividend Growth Investing (DGI). If you want to see…
Income to the Moon: Income Investing Your Way To Retirement
Saving for retirement is boring. Somehow, at age 25, you are supposed to prioritize your retirement planning over buying a flashy car. This rarely works in reality because it’s a tough pill to swallow. However, there is a different way, but it will take a complete shift in mindset. What if I told you that…
The Biggest Book on Passive Income Ever 3!
What is the point of working hard to build passive income? Couldn’t we achieve the same results by getting a high-paying job? Yes and no. Money is money, no matter how it arrives in your account—this is true. But the magic of passive income is you can do whatever you want as it grows inside…
Don’t Gamble with Retirement 9
It’s always exciting when I add to the “Don’t Gamble with Retirement” series. It is one of my longest-running series, and I love documenting as the world changes. I wrote the first article in a series in February 2021, when we were in a raging bull market. Today, the stock market is in the opposite…
LBYM: Live Below Your Means and Increase Your Savings Rate
“Living below your means” gets a bad reputation. People hear these words and assume you need to eat grits, make honey sandwiches, and recycle toilet paper. But that’s not the case at all. Living below your means simply means creating cash flow through your household. It also means that you do not subscribe to the…
New Year’s Passive Income Resolution 2023
What a fantastic year we had in 2022. Yes, the stock market crashed, but things still lined up in our favor. That is the magic of passive income—it helps protect you from downturns. I started the year bullish on cryptocurrencies and still feel the same. They will be a significant part of our transition to…
Make Your Primary Residence Your Retirement Plan
What is your plan for retirement? How do you plan to replace at least 100% of your employment income with annual increases for inflation? For most Americans, this is a tough question to answer. It seems impossible to make more money without working than they made while employed. If you own a home, you have…
Retirement Planning with Index Funds
Index funds are a fantastic tool to leverage the stock market’s growth. They are as close to a “set it and forget it” investment plan as possible. However, there is one thing I want you to take away from this article; index fund investing is not enough for a worry-free retirement. To have a great…
